Primate Conservation in the 21st Century

Nonhuman primates are facing an on-going extinction crisis. Sixty-nine per cent of primate species for which data are available are listed by the IUCN as Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered, and over 93% have declining populations (Garber et al., 2024). In this regard, primates represent the most threatened speciose Order of Mammals. Moreover, this has occurred despite the enormous efforts of national and international primate societies, nonprofit organizations, international agencies, and primate conservation scientists worldwide, who have worked tirelessly to protect primate species and their habitats. And, despite the fact that we have had many victories in protecting local primate populations, we are losing the war and if we continue business-as-usual, there will be a mass primate extinction event within the next 50 years.

Therefore, it is time that rethink what it means to be a primate scientist in the 21^st century and the role that primate scientists must play in education and conservation. And although as primatologists, we understand that protecting primates and their ecosystems is critical for human survival, the public, business leaders, and our political representatives are largely unaware. Therefore, as scientists we need to expand our audience and communicate more directly with the public, because when people care, business leaders care, and policymakers care, and we are more successful in working together to protect primates and their habitats. This will require that we act as both scientists and advocates for change. Scientific advocacy can be aligned with the values of objectivity and transparency, as long as we base our advocacy on careful data collection, careful data analysis, and careful data interpretation. A recent study published in the journal Nature and Human Behavior (Cologna et al., 2025) found that across many countries, citizens have greater trust in scientists than in their national government. This opens the opportunity for scientists to communicate their research directly to the public and play a greater role advocating for policies that protect human welfare, the environment, and biodiversity. I argue strongly, that if we are to increase our chances of saving primate populations from extinction, we need to rethink our role as scientists, expand our tool kit, and work with and better educate the public, business executives, and political leaders in order to create more balanced and more effective conservation solutions. We can best accomplish this by including scientific advocacy as an important component of our professional responsibilities.

References Cited

Cologna V. et al. (2025). Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries. Nature Human Behavior https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02090-5

Garber, P.A., Dolins, F.L., and Lapan S. (2024). Scientific activism to protect the world's primates and their environments from extinction: Introduction to the special

Issue.  American Journal of Primatology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.23601